Amherst H. Wilder Foundation cutting 200 jobs
The Amherst H. Wilder Foundation Wednesday announced plans to cut about 200 jobs over the next nine months.
The organization currently has about 650 employees in St. Paul. The 100-year-old foundation is also phasing out its work in some areas, including children's foster care, home health and housing management services. An estimated 5,000 clients will be affected by the cuts.
The spending cuts amount to about one-third of the organization's $51 million annual budget.
Officials say none of the layoffs are effective immediately.
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Tom Kingston, Wilder Foundation President blamed the recession for the cuts.
"These cuts are a result of the bad economy finally catching up with the non-profit human service sector," Kingston said. "Right now, Wilder's endowment is down by 17 percent and for the last five years our funding sources have not been keeping up with our cost of doing business."
Kingston said The Wilder Foundation is working to place clients affected by the cuts with other social service agencies.
"The reality is we can't do everything we were doing before and that is getting to be true across our entire human service sector so no one was pleased and to a person everybody is really concerned about the future for the clients that we are serving," he said.